This is one of those shows that kind of pisses me off at the end. Not because they bring somebody back to life at the end just to make a happy ending or anything like that. But because it is a great, clean show right up until the end and then they throw in some garbage just, well, because. I know it probably sounds odd to put it this way, but I get when a show puts garbage and nudity up front: because they want to get people hooked who will hope for more later. I don’t get when they do that at the end because it really doesn’t serve any purpose. Everything is clean for 23 episodes and then on episode 24 they put in some junk. Really? What just to make some shmuck happy and feel like he didn’t waste 6 hours of his life “for nothing”?  Bah, whatever. </rant>

That being said, I absolutely loved this show. It did a great job on story line, plot development, comedy, developing characters, pretty much everything. The story revolves around a virtual reality MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) where people hook up to a virtual reality system so that they can be fully immersed in the game universe. However, something goes wrong shortly after the launch of the latest game. The players are all trapped in the game and will not be allowed to disconnect from the system until somebody beats the game – but that could take months! In the mean time, if you die in the game, you die in the real world so it quickly becomes a dog-eat-dog world with players fighting to survive, literally.

Kirito is a skilled swordsman who has been playing these games for a long time. Does he have the skill to complete the game and beat the final boss? His friends think he might, but he is too afraid of making a mistake and getting people killed. Especially another player that has become very important to him. Can he manage to beat the game, and save this newbie girl that has become the center of his life? Will his skill be good enough to save everyone or will he have to sacrifice people along the way to ensure his own survival?

Back to episode 24. About half way through the episode one of the female characters is being held hostage. The antagonist rips her top off rendering her exposed for I would guess about 5 minutes of the show. Most, if not nearly all, of the time the camera angle is from the back or mostly obscured by hair from the side. At-least one time, however, it pretty much does a full frontal shot from a medium distance. While technically a few strands of hair block things, there is not much left to the imagination of the viewer. If the studio every re-edited this scene to remove that part of obscure things more I would have called this a perfect show.

At the time of writing, this was an extremely popular show on the streaming sites. There are multiple manga volumes, a video game, 2 light novel story arcs (over 13 volumes between the two) and of course the anime. It has been licensed for release in North America with an English dub. And this story did not even begin until mid 2009, with most everything starting late 2010. The primary light novel driving everything has 12 volumes so far. The first 2 is the Aincrad story arc and the next 2 are the Fairy Dance story arc, both of which are covered by this anime. There are another 4 or 5 story arcs covered by the light novels meaning there is an ability for another season of the anime, and indeed there are rumors of a continued show. I say continued show instead of a season number because there is debate on wether or not Fairy Dance was season 2 or part of season 1 (there was no break and indeed it is listed as episodes 14-25 I believe). Anyway the next story arc would likely be Gun Gale Online if you want to try and find definitive information on it.

Did I enjoy the show? Yes, despite the junk in episode 24. Will I watch more of the show if they make new seasons? Definitely.